A number of systems and programs are offered on the market for the design, the engineering and the manufacturing of objects. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design, e.g. it relates to software solutions for designing an object. CAE is an acronym for Computer-Aided Engineering, e.g. it relates to software solutions for simulating the physical behavior of a future product. CAM is an acronym for Computer-Aided Manufacturing, e.g. it relates to software solutions for defining manufacturing processes and operations. In such computer-aided design systems, the graphical user interface plays an important role as regards the efficiency of the technique. These techniques may be embedded within Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems. PLM refers to a business strategy that helps companies to share product data, apply common processes, and leverage corporate knowledge for the development of products from conception to the end of their life, across the concept of extended enterprise.
The PLM solutions provided by Dassault Systemes (under the trademarks CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA) provide an Engineering Hub, which organizes product engineering knowledge, a Manufacturing Hub, which manages manufacturing engineering knowledge, and an Enterprise Hub which enables enterprise integrations and connections into both the Engineering and Manufacturing Hubs. All together the system delivers an open object model linking products, processes, resources to enable dynamic, knowledge-based product creation and decision support that drives optimized product definition, manufacturing preparation, production and service.
In the context of CAD/CAE/CAM, designing a product can comprise designing a route between two points. Designing a route is typically performed for operations such as tubing to route tubes, piping to route Pipes, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning) to route air ducts, electrical cable to route cables, raceway to route trays. The design of a route is typically done for industrial products such as cars, buildings, ships, airplanes, and these industrial products cause the designed route to be realistic. A route is typically a succession of straight portions connected with regular angles and standard bend radius because of the regular shapes of the industrial products. For instance, a building comprises walls that are typically connected each other with perpendicular angles. Walls are therefore constraints to be taken into accounts when designing air ducts route: for instance, the route will follow a path along the walls.
Some CAD systems include piping and tubing design capabilities, or plugins providing these capabilities may be installed on CAD software. However, the existing solutions suffer of several drawbacks. First, they do not help the designer to select the right path quickly with the right input. In particular, in the event the solution is only a line, the designer cannot check with right precision the clash with the context. In addition, it can take time for the designer to review all solutions because the solutions are show one by one. Moreover, impossible solutions are shown: an impossible solution is a solution that is not realistic. For instance, an air ducts route following three portions of a same wall is considered as being an impossible solution because such a solution is unrealistic in the real world.
Within this context, there is still a need for an improved method for designing a route connecting a first point to a second point in a three-dimensional scene.